


There's A Yes In Your Head (Gotta Find Where It's At)

by biextroverts



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Canon Compliant, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 16:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15146708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biextroverts/pseuds/biextroverts
Summary: Beau doesn't think that Jester feels the same way about her as she feels about Jester, but she's decided that tonight is the night she's going to find out for sure.





	There's A Yes In Your Head (Gotta Find Where It's At)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Party Tattoos" by dodie clark.

          Beau doesn’t know if the Broken Bread Tavern is this crowded every night or if someone (probably Molly, possibly aided by Jester) had somehow found a way to invite the entire populace of Summerstone between the time of their victory over the bugbears and the time they’re halfway through their second celebratory drinks, but either way, Beau doesn’t think she’s ever been surrounded by more people than she is by the time it nears eleven at night that night – Caleb by her side, almost pressed against her in his desire to avoid pressing the length of his body to Fjord’s, Yasha across the table beside Molly and the harem of of townsfolk he’s amassed – a handful of humans, a half-elf or two, even a halfling woman who’s almost got her elbows in Molly’s lap she’s leaning so hard against his chair – and Jester at the other end across from Fjord, who, the last time Beau chanced a look her way, was trying to capture as many unwary taverngoers as she could to regale with the tale of the Mighty Nein’s victory. The other tables in the tavern, as well as the bar, are all full as well, of people laughing and joking and drinking on Molly’s tab. Beau leans against the wooden back of the bench and sips her ale, trying to figure out where Nott’s got to and trying _not_ to think about Jester.    
  
          “She’s really good at punching things.”

          Beau glances across the table at the half-caught reference to herself. Jester has ensnared three of the tavern’s other patrons to listen to her story – two human men and a half-elven woman, who gives Beau an awestruck look when Beau’s eyes meet her saucer-wide ones. Beau offers the woman a smirk and a two-fingered salute, and the woman flushes a shade of pink almost appealing even to Beau, who has never much cared for the color.

          Then Jester, following her audience’s gaze, glances over as well, offering Beau a grin and a wave when she catches Beau’s languid stare. Beau doesn’t believe Fjord is turning into water, as Jester had theorized when he’d woken up half-drowned, but she might just turn to jelly when she locks eyes with Jester, smiling at Beau with her whole face in that way that only Jester can. Beau feels loose-limbed and almost nauseous, her stomach doing flips more complicated and impressive than anything the Cobalt Soul could ever teach her.

          “Wish that were all I was good at,” Beau mutters, and Caleb pauses in stroking Frumpkin and gazing longingly at Fjord in order to shoot her a glance, eyebrows raised in a silent approximation of Beau’s own preferred “you good?” method of offering emotional support.

          “Pardon?” Caleb says. “What did you say?”

          Beau waves a hand through the air. “Nothing,” she says. “Nevermind.”

          Caleb stares at her for a moment, as unblinking as his familiar, as if trying to decide whether to pursue questioning Beau further. Finally, he shrugs and turns his attention back to running his fingers through Frumpkin’s soft pelt and giving Fjord the sad puppy eyes of what he doesn’t know is definitely not unrequited love.  Beau’s rooting for the pair of them to figure it out, but she’s not about to hurry them along – first of all, it’s none of her business, and second of all, there is, admittedly, a little jealousy that kicks up in her at the idea of her two closest friends in the party getting together while she third wheels them and does what she does best, which is pining after girls who definitely don’t feel the same way.

          “I don’t know what rumors you’ve heard,” Molly says, leaning across the table to murmur to her, “but they’re not true.” He’s surrounded, as always, by an entourage, who fawn over him as Yasha looks on, fond incredulity dancing in her normally stoic eyes. Beau gets it – well, gets the incredulous part. She can’t imagine why anyone would want to sleep with Molly.

          “The fuck are you talking about?” Beau asks, and Molly’s pupil-less red gaze flicks over to Jester, causing Beau’s stomach to flip again, before settling back on Beau.

          “People say some truly astounding things about tieflings. That we’ve got teeth down there, that we’ll melt your fingers if you stick them up either end … I’ve met a few who were disappointed to find it wasn’t true, but you don’t seem like the type to go for all that, if I’m being honest.”

          “What’s your fucking point?”

          “It’s all made up, what they say about us. So if you want to fuck her …”

          “I want you to fuck off,” Beau says.

          Molly spreads his hands in a gesture of magnanimous compliance. Beau would punch him if it weren’t for the table between them.

          “I’m just saying,” Molly calls out to her after a moment, just when she thinks that maybe he’s really shut up and is going to leave her alone for the rest of the night, “I think she’d probably say yes.”

          Beau flips him off, and he laughs, turns to the elven youth nearest him and begins working his wiles. Beau exchanges a look with Yasha, a “can you believe him?” that is returned with a small, smiling “hardly, even seeing it with my own eyes” from the statuesque barbarian. Molly’s words stick in Beau’s mind, though (not the ones about teeth and melted fingers, but the “I think she’d probably say yes” that came at the end), and she watches Jester more closely as the night wears on. Her roommate is as sociable as ever, talking and joking with the more conventional of the tavern’s patrons, as well as with Fjord and and Molly and Nott, cheating townspeople at cards and cackling gleefully as they drop silver after silver into her purse with each winning hand (and slipping pamphlets to The Traveler into their pockets as they leave to head home for the night). But every so often, Jester will glance over in Beau’s direction and offer her that guileless smile, that little wave that is just a wiggling of the fingers rather than a movement of the entire hand, and Beau’s heart will roundhouse kick her in the ribs. Jester doesn’t shoot the looks at anyone else, not even Fjord, with whom she’s flirted the most – as fun as it might otherwise be to see the normally charming Fjord flustered, Beau has considered several times throwing that damn smut of Jester’s into the nearest body of the water. She never wants to hear the name Oskar again. But Jester’s eyes don’t seek the half-orc’s over the course of the night at all; they seek Beau’s, again and again. By the time they’re finally mounting the stairs for bed, the tavern having cleared out even of their fellow members of the Mighty Nein (Yasha had picked a thoroughly plastered Nott up by her midsection sometime around midnight and carried her upstairs before she could get caught picking pockets, Molly had gone home with the elven youth, departing with a toothy grin and a promise to “be back by lunchtime,” and Caleb had followed Fjord up the stairs after a painfully forced ten minute wait around half-past one, like the lag made anything less obvious), Beau is somewhere between tipsy and drunk, inhibitions dampened enough that she can finally try to talk to Jester about the thoughts that have been nagging at her all night – about her feelings, she guesses, although that’s gross.

          “Hey, Jester,” she says, and Jester turns with the room key in the keyhole to look at her. “You seemed like you had a pretty good time tonight.”

          “Oh, yes!” Jester says, after a moment of just staring at Beau like maybe she’s come down with something. “I made so much money, Beau!” Her coin purse jingles when she shakes it. “I will be able to buy supplies to make more pamphlets to The Traveler, which is good because I kind of gave out most of the ones I had tonight.” The not-quite-sheepish smile she gives Beau is almost enough to knock Beau prone. 

          “Yeah, I saw,” Beau says. “You made a lot of friends tonight.”

          “Not as many as Molly, though.” Jester waggles her eyebrows. “He’s going to have a  _ lot _ of sex tonight, you know?”

          Beau wrinkles her nose. “Don’t make me think about it. Karma is  _ fake _ .”

          Jester knits her eyebrows and tilts her head. “Karma?” she asks.

          “Yeah. Like, if you’re a good person then good shit happens to you, and if you’re a trash person then garbage happens to you. Molly  _ sucks _ ; he shouldn’t be getting any.”

          “Well, I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you,” Jester says brightly. There’s something about the utterance – the way her tone fails to change, which irks Beau a little, or the implied assumption that Beau  _ is _ getting any, which is flattering and sends Beau’s heart into a somersault  – that causes Beau to straighten her stance, to meet Jester’s eyes rather than speaking to her freckled left cheek or the pointed helix of her right ear.

          “Bastard’s got karma in his fucking pocket, then,” Beau says. “I’m –” she looks down at her feet – “you know, not. Getting any.”

          “Oh!” Jester says. “That sucks. Me either, though, you know?”

          When Beau looks back up at Jester’s face, trying to figure out how the hell to interpret  _ that _ , Jester is grinning at her like nothing confusing has been said.

          “Oh,” Beau says, slowly. “Sorry. I mean you’re … not a trash person, so, y’know.  _ I’d  _ pick you over Molly.” She’d pick just about anyone over Molly, and she’d pick Jester first, but she’s not going to bring up either of those things.

          “Thanks!” Jester says. “I’d pick you over Molly, too.”

          Beau’s cheeks burn. She studies Jester’s face, trying to figure out how much the reciprocation means; Jester’s perpetually light tone can make her difficult to read, but Beau thinks there’s a dare flickering like candlelight in Jester’s eyes. And Beau has never been one to turn down a dare.

          “What about Fjord?” Beau says. “I mean, you flirt with him a lot. Would you pick me over him, too?”

          “Fjord gets so green!” Jester says. “It’s really funny to watch. He is very good with people, but he is not very good with flirting. He could not figure out how to come on to Caleb until I helped him out.”

          “Oh, so you sped that along, huh?” Beau says. “I sort of wanted to see how long it would take them to get their shit together without help, but I guess stepping in was probably the nicer thing to do. For them, anyways. Watching their insufferable love-iness is probably going to be gross for the rest of us.”

          “Isn’t it great?” Jester says, either ignoring or failing to process the last of Beau’s line of thought. “Anyways, flirting with Fjord was fun, but, you know, he would pick Caleb first, technically, and I would pick you first, technically, you know?”

          “You’d pick me, first, to … you know? Like, out of the Mighty Nein, or?”

          “Anyone, really,” Jester says, as if the confession is no object. “You’re really good at punching things, and at making people laugh, even though technically, you are not very funny, technically.”

          “...thanks?” Beau says slowly, heart racing at the “anyone, really,” and brain whirring at the rest of …  whatever that was. Jester is a confusing person. Beau kind of loves that about her.

          “Can I kiss you?” Jester asks.

          It takes a moment for Beau’s mind to catch up to and process that, but when she does, she nods, gets out an “uh, yeah; yeah” before Jester steps up and takes the back of Beau’s head with one hand and one of Beau’s hands with the other and kisses her, cool and sweet and tasting of milk and sugar and fried dough, and, when Beau opens her mouth to Jester and Jester reciprocates, tongue laving over Beau’s, a hint of sharpness, like breaking off a piece of an icicle and letting it melt in the heat of your mouth. Beau’s free hand finds its way to Jester’s waist, pulling her in close and making Jester giggle when their hips knock together. Jester pulls back a little, although Beau’s hand at the small of her back keeps her from truly drawing away, and Jester doesn’t try. Laughter dances in her eyes as always, but something headier keeps it company for the first time that Beau’s ever seen, and she loves it, loves the way it darkens Jester’s violet irises to a color halfway between indigo and wine to which she doubts anyone else has ever born witness. “Hey,” Beau says, feeling acutely aware of every nerve in her body, especially given the alcohol in her system and the late hour. “Hey.”

          “Hey yourself,” Jester says, leaning down slightly to press a kiss to the tip of Beau’s nose. She giggles, and Beau reflects, briefly, that she’s really not like any other girl Beau’s ever crushed on (except for the fact that she could probably lift Beau over her head in a military press without breaking a sweat), but hey, since when has Beau been one to stick to any sort of pattern?

          Beau flushes, grins, pulls Jester back down with hands around the back of her neck to kiss her on the mouth again. When Beau pulls away, Jester turns back, turns the key in the lock to their room, and swings open the door, disappearing through it. Beau’s heart still races, pounding against her ribcage from the kissing, from the confirmation that  _Jester likes her_ (Molly will be smug beyond belief when he finds out, but it will be worth it, becuase Jester is worth anything Beau can think of) but before it’s had time to slow, before Beau’s lips have forgotten the warmth and pressure of another pair of lips against them, a blue hand is being extended through the doorway, and, when Beau takes it, she is pulled into their room and back into Jester’s waiting arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written fic for Critical Role before, so feedback would be especially appreciated - tell me what I did well so I can keep doing it, and what I need to work on so I can do better next time!


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